


Singing Praise To One Pair Of Hands

by Iamasortofvillain



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, One Shot, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Shameless Smut, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:40:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29904678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamasortofvillain/pseuds/Iamasortofvillain
Summary: Basically, a super gay short one-shot about Jamie's hands
Relationships: Dani Clayton & Jamie, Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 8
Kudos: 101





	Singing Praise To One Pair Of Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This one was ready a while ago but I was super self-conscious about putting it out there for some reason.

Jamie is six years old when she first learns fists are angry, painful creatures with minds of their own. She's six years old when she first learns fists don't have to be big and veiny and dark with soot to do damage. They can be small and mean and full of bad intentions and a deep need for violence.

She's six years old when she first learns the taste of blood.

//

Fists, Jamie learns pretty quickly after spitting blood for the first time, are something to master, not something to fear. So she fights. She pushes and she punches and she makes noses bleed. She earns some bruises as well, a black eye, a throbbing cheek-bone, a split lip. She's too small not to wear any marks when the fury rises and the anger has only one way out.

She's small and she isn't dressed well, always has a stain on her collar or a new hole in her pants or the shirt is sliding off one shoulder, too big for her tiny starved frame, a cheap hand-me-down.

"Trash," they sneer at her, pushing her into muddy puddles, stomping on her stomach.

"Bitch," they scream when she sinks her knees into their compromised crotches.

"Whore," they whisper when she clutches her torn backpack, stumbling back home, blood running into her eyes, willing herself not to cry.

"Christ," says her mother with obvious disgust. "Look at you, you little rat. Think your father's breakin' his back down in the ground for you to come home looking like that? Think that clothes grow on trees, are ye?"

Fists, Jamie knows, make sense. They are painful creatures but hers are no less violent, no less strong for it. They make sense, unlike the whispers and the laughs, muffled behind palms. They make sense, unlike the looks, and the plucking at her clothes, unlike the names she's given, not sure, at eight years old, what she did wrong.

So she swings and she punches and she plunges into fights too big for her. She's already learned that if she swings hard enough, if she punches hard enough, she could get some of the tension out. She's already learned being kicked in the stomach feels different when it happens in the schoolyard instead of at home. Not less painful, but much less humiliating. Much less scary.

At eight she's relentless. At twelve she's snappy. At sixteen she's downright wild; filthy and hungry and out of control, too damn tired of perverted men who look at her funny and bitter wives who snarl at her in the shadows and another visit of the social worker, who bites her lower lip and shakes her head and promises the next place will be better.

//

 _Trash_ , they still call her.

 _Bitch_ , they still call her.

 _Whore_ , they still call her, from time to time.

 _Dyke_ is a new one, one that tastes strange and furious and wrong, because unlike the other names, this one cuts deeper to a place where her soul lies, tattered and small. It's nothing to do with fists and everything to do with her and Jamie knows she can strip away the other names, she can run and she can hide and she can leave it all behind, but this one. This one will _stick_ , because she tastes not only blood, now, but soft lips and softer curves and hot, warm, wet centres that quiver if she presses hard enough.

 _Trash_ , they still call her.

 _Bitch_ , they still call her.

 _Whore_ , they still call her, from time to time.

 _Dyke_ , is a new one, but there is power behind the word and Jamie grins and shrugs and flirts all the harder for it.

The bruises don't fade. But they hurt less now.

//

The battles are easy. The rules are simple. There is always someone stupid enough to start a fight. Someone stupid enough to catch on to her intentions. Someone stupid enough to push her aside with his shoulder, stomp on her foot in a dark pub full of drunks, push a hand up her shirt in search for something Jamie is not willing to give.

There is always someone who doesn't take kindly to the swing of her hips or the cock of her head or the stretch of her smile. Someone who doesn't take kindly to the way she circles a secret arm around girls' waists, the way she puffs cigarette smoke skywards, the way she laughs, husky and rolling and young.

There is always Someone to resist the simple gesture of a sharp jerk of a head and a bitter biting of "Piss the fuck off, why won't you?"

There is always Someone to give her exactly what she wants, exactly what she needs, fists curled and palms itching and tongue already hot with the taste of blood.

It's a bad way of doing things, but Jamie doesn't know better. Or so she tells herself.

//

Jamie is sixteen years old when she first learns violence isn't the only way to let off some steam. She's sixteen years old when she first learns fists don't have to be the answer to the anger swirling inside her, choking and dark and everything painful.

She's sixteen years old when she first learns kisses are sloppy, exciting creatures who take as much as they give and don't have to be stolen.

//

There is a sloppy smile and a too-bright smile and a little suggestive curve of an eyebrow. There is a shrug, a tilt of the head, a brush of fingertips that never arise quite the right sort of need, but do just fine.

This is effective, Jamie learns, quick and happy and excited. This is just as effective as sinking a fist into a crunchy bone, just as effective as drinking till she's sick, just as effective as spilling out her rage and anger in a manner that will, eventually, earn her another bruise or another cut or another bloodied nose and a string of endless, gleeful question, she isn't ready to answer. Not now. Not ever.

So there is a woman and there is a grin. It's a sloppy one but it's directed at her and who is she to deny what is happening here? There is an arch of a plucked eyebrow, a bite of a lower lip, a swing of hips.

They say _dyke_ like it might scare her away, set her running, ashamed of a lust directed at the right kind of release. They say _dyke_ like they believe it means more than it does, more than soft and lovely and _right_.

 _They,_ Jamie knows. _Don't understand jack shit_.

Her hands are itching. She's still punching.

//

Fists, Jamie learns, eighteen and sinking faster than a rock thrown hard into an icy lake, are a good practice, a good blanket, a good answer, as the woman, who's been nothing but kind and nothing but happy and nothing but hot with her, is turning pleading eyes her way, as she explains why Jamie is better suited to take the fall, as the cops put metal cuffs around Jamie's wrists and refuse to listen, huddling her into the back seat of their car, as the yard is surrounded by a huge fence and she's forced into a small cell, kicking and fighting the whole way down.

Fists are important things, clever creatures, nothing but spikey armor in time of need, as she turns them, for the first time in her life, into things that hurt other women; women who are snarling and cruel and happy to hurt her with more than just words.

"Why," Jamie cries when the girl who's been kissing her for two years in the privacy of their small stinky apartment, on the dirtiest street in London, is cupping her hands to Jamie's jaw and whispering sweet nothings. "Why?"

"It's better this way," she says and Jamie is nodding nodding nodding, too heart-broken to understand.

//

Jamie is eighteen and is pleased to discover her hands are good for more than fighting and fucking.

//

Jamie moves toward the woman, glances to the dark corners, just an old habit she still cannot kick at twenty-one years old. Nobody's watching, nobody's paying attention, and the woman is too bright and too attractive and too slick to resist.

Jamie is twenty-one years old and she dropped her wild, mad habit of throwing fists, and instead took to kissing, curling close, jumping headfirst, and hoping for the best.

//

Jamie is twenty-two years old when she meets the first woman she doesn't want to sink her claws into, to turn her into a writhing, panting mess. She's twenty-two years old when she meets the first man to look at her as an equal, to look her straight in the eyes and nowhere else, and offer her a job.

"Cheers," Jamie chokes, almost laughing, because the couple is clean and the couple is neat and she's just a rat in a filthy shirt, the kid of two morons who couldn't make it work even if they tried. Just trash. Just a nobody. Not worthy of their precious time.

"Cheers, but I couldn't".

"Really?" says the elegant woman, eyes sad and breaming with tears.

"I understand if you don't want to leave London," says the elegant man, his smile soft and fatherly. He has the word ' _Lord_ ' imprinted on his card. "But let me insist a little longer. Tell you what, miss Taylor. It doesn't have to be forever. Not even for a year. Let's make it a trial position, and if you find you don't like it, or the village is too boring, I'll be happy to refer you to other places that might suit you better. Here. In London".

"You don't understand," Jamie says. "It's not that I don't want to. I just can't".

"Already engaged in another job," the woman says, gentle and understanding and Jamie chokes around another bitter laugh.

"I wish. But no one hires a felon".

The man looks at her with the same softness, the same sadness, the same tiny smile of complete understanding. The woman smiles a broad smile, a confident curve of lips Jamie finds fascinating. They aren't screaming and aren't running and aren't showering her with mean, biting words.

"This is fixable," Lady Wingrave tells Jamie and that's that.

//

Jamie is just shy of twenty-three years old when she abandons fists altogether and takes to bruising her palms on softer things, takes to curling her fingers around tender sharp thorns, takes to making things grow instead of bleed.

Jamie is just shy of twenty-three and she can hardly remember the taste of blood. Can hardly remember the crunch of bones. Can hardly remember the press of hot, burning lips, crushing against her with spilled desire and this is better. This is much better.

* * *

Jamie, you learn pretty quickly, is good with her hands. It's a notion that makes you blush if you spend too much time thinking about it, if you stop and think at all about it.

Jamie is good with her hands and it makes your head dizzy and your heart to knock a vicious beat against the inside of your chest, but true nonetheless.

Jamie is good with her hands.

Jamie, who digs her fingers in soil on a daily basis and scratches her palms on wooden tools she has no business wielding with bare hands. Jamie, who rarely remembers to use the gardening gloves, who let cigarettes burn to the filter between her fingers, who claps hard and shakes firmly and rubs her palms on her thighs, sticking them deep inside her jacket pockets on her way to her truck.

Jamie has a gentle touch that is golden in every meaningful way and – 

She is good with her hands.

Jamie swings hammers and tools, gently cuts flowers, pulls weeds and builds things, and screws light bulbs into place with practiced ease. She arranges flowers around the house, in tall vases, in small pots. She smooths her hands on certain work, she even slumps down next to Flora and shows her some sewing trick you're having trouble wrapping your head around.

"Thank you," you say, breathless and smiling, your heart-beat a thunder under your skin.

"Not a problem, Poppins," Jamie's smile is good as a saint's, her fingers already dipping into Owen's tin cookie jar, stealing biscuits and dropping crumbs, doing that with her usual power. Her usual attention-snatching grace.

Jamie, rough around the edges, slightly reckless, swaggering Jamie, is _good with her hands_ and it makes your head spin a little.

//

Because Jamie's so good with her hands, because Jamie's hands never tremble and never hesitate, because Jamie's hands are confident and calloused and never shy from hard work, it hits you particularly hard when her fingers, cold and _shaking_ almost too hard to command, miss the zipper once, twice, before dragging it down your spine, her breath shallow on your neck, her body radiating heat.

There is a knot in your stomach, a terror under your buzzing skin, a reckless rushing of a thundering pulse behind your ears and you think she must feel it too, this buzzing electricity between you. You can't be imagining it.

The lack of grace about her in your bedroom, the tension in her back, and the fear in her eyes is something you could never have imagined. Jamie, charming enough to wriggle out of Hannah's wrath after stepping on a newly cleaned floor with mud-caked boots, brilliant enough to turn your shallow breaths and breathless sobs into hiccuped chuckles, good enough to lift a limp small body like it weighs nothing and tuck it into a pink bed; this Jamie is nowhere to be seen. Instead, you're left with a strange version, slightly unfunctional and very aware, sliding trembling knuckles down your newly exposed spine and you think you might combust.

"I'll be back in a few hours," Jamie says with stormy eyes and a sinner's smile, and her hands, her good, steady, beautiful hands, are flexing by her sides.

 _Is it because you want to touch me but you won't allow yourself the trial?_ you think desperately, gazing into Jamie's face. _Can't you_ see _I want it, too? Can't you_ feel _I want it, too?_

Sunlight is spilling through the window, covered by thin blinds, and dancing into Jamie's hair. Her eyes are good. Her hands are plucking at her dress.

"Okay," you say like you forgot how to breathe and there are other words piling up behind your lips, dangerous and stupid and coated with mad desire. You clench your teeth not to let them out by a stupid mistake. This is just Jamie, and those are just hands. Her swaggering stride is not excuse enough to be reckless.

"Yeah?" she's still laughing and your heart plummets.

//

Jamie's hands, for all their calloused recklessness, for all their scarred roughness, are magnificently tender. Her fingers, so often bleeding and cut, so often wrapped in band-aids and stuck in her mouth, sucked at and waving, are gentle, tender things.

Jamie's hands, when she brushes past you, are a welcome distraction, a thing designed to make you blush.

Jamie's hands, when she holds your palms, are sparkling, exciting press - a game of pull and push with an open door for you to step out as soon as you don't feel like playing anymore.

Jamie's hands around you in a loose circle, in your hair and on your cheeks and against the low of your back, is the kind of exposed wire, a lit fuse you always knew them to be, and you've never understood electricity but you do now.

You press your forehead against the heavy wooden door, breathing shallowly. Jamie is standing behind you, hands on your hips, her touch is light, like saying _I know what we came here for. I know what we both want. But you can say_ no. _You can still back away from this and it's_ okay.

"I want to," you whisper into the sparkling space built between you, into the gravity of Jamie's presence behind you, and Jamie slides her hands, hot and strong and so so gentle, around your waist, pressing her rough palm against your stomach, pulling you tenderly back until your head is rolling on her shoulder and her mouth is skidding across your throat.

Jamie's thumb is stroking idly back and forth, a trail that designed to drive you insane.

"Are you sure?" Jamie says, nervous and choked and not moving. Her hands, her beautiful, maddening hands, are on you and it's hard to think. It's hard to breathe. It's hard to do much more than lean into her, slide your hand into her curls and pull her in for a heated kiss.

Jamie's hands, like Jamie herself, are brilliant creatures. They climb slowly up your ribs, drag slowly down your sides, pulling tight soft, damp fabric across your middle. You feel a trail of burning goosebumps in Jamie's palms wake, feel her fingers pull lightly, not trying to remove anything, and you're little more than a puddle of panting mess in her hands.

Jamie's hands are brave, and tender and sweet. Jamie's hands are magnificent and safe and _good_. Nothing to fear. Only to desire.

You're moving together, you're turning in her arms, pushing in. Jamie is running her brave fingertips along your shoulders, the side of your breasts. Her close proximity is intoxicating. Her hands; her good, smart, brave hands are everywhere at once.

You sigh when Jamie's lips trace your neck, the underside of your jaw. She's tilting your head back slowly, softly, as if scared to make too sharp a move. You let your own hands land in her hair, curl into soft, sweet silky waves. She kisses in a slow, measured way, a burning path. Your jumper is crumbling in her fingers.

"Slow," Jamie murmurs against your skin as she pushes her good hands between fabric and skin. "Slow," even as her lips are parting and her tongue is licking at you. "Slow," even as she's pushing your hair behind your shoulder and all good sense is spilling into a reckless desire.

But you're not ready for slow and you're not ready for easy. Not with Jamie's smart hands on your hips, on your waist, in your hair. Not with Jamie's hot tongue rolling against your neck, nudging between your lips, searching inside your mouth. Not with Jamie shifting against you, easing a leg between yours, pressing up.

Not with Jamie slowly, deliberately, profoundly, rocking her hips against you.

You move against her, picking up speed. Your jumper is a mess, pushed up against your breasts, and so is Jamie's shirt where you have your fists balled into – one at her shoulder, the other between her shoulder blades.

Jamie is kissing you. It's dark and there is an increasingly desperate lull to it all. Your kisses are out of sync, both of you panting and mewling little sounds into each other's mouths.

When you pull away just enough to catch your breath, Jamie looks rumpled. She looks ravaged and needy and wild, her mouth a full curve of a smile, her hands traveling all the way from your shoulders to your cheeks, disappearing in your hair, eyes dark with desire.

Jamie's hands, always careful not to push, not to press, not to linger for too long, are now all over your body. On your thighs and hips and back, your breasts, pushing you gently, pressing you against her, with rising need.

You move against her flexing thigh and a spike of hot pleasure travels like a lightning strike from down between your legs to your chest. You hiss, gasping around Jamie's name, and the eyes, the stormy, greyish-green eyes, are shining behind a haze of desire. Of pure lust. Of something just out of reach, something more tender and more gentle and much softer than this whole encounter.

"Jamie," you gasp helplessly. " _Jamie_ – "

And Jamie understands. The same Jamie, with her teasing smiles that never spill into mocking. The same Jamie, with her bright eyes, never quite lingering enough to count. The same Jamie, with her strong hands, so ready to caress and nourish and coax flowers to bloom.

You're tumbling into your neatly made bed and Jamie is rolling on top of you, all knowing moves and practiced eagerness. she's kissing you, sliding her hands beneath your sweater, down your stomach. You're going wild with how hot she is, how gentle, even now, even with your mind half shut, with your body buzzing, with something hot and slick that stick your underwear uncomfortably to your skin.

"You sure?" Jamie rasps and you nod frantically, eyes wide with disbelief.

"Yes! _Yes_!"

And Jamie's hands, practiced and skilled and knowing, are dipping between your legs, into ruined underwear, sliding through soft curls, contacting wet swollen skin.

Jamie groans and you let out a quiet moan at the same time. You clutch at her shoulders and Jamie sets a slow, desperate rhythm with her fingers, her nose buried in your neck, your face pressed to the side of her head, breathing hard into her ear.

It's embarrassingly easy, for Jamie to push you over the edge. A small groan of your name, a muffled laugh, a deliberate rub just the way you need it and your pulse is rocketing, your breath is catching, your body is pushing with out-of-control urgency into Jamie's hands and you shudder under her, stars blazing your vision, hot surge of lazy desire coating Jamie's waiting fingers.

//

There is a hand at your hip, curling to hold you close. Jamie's hand - never a trap, always a genuine desire. Strong, but not cruel. Safe, with no trace of ownership.

You kiss her, sloppy and panting, as best as you can while sitting astride her, rolling your hips into her lap in time with your moving fingers, smeared with Jamie's burning desire, dipped between soft, wet folds.

You flex your hand and Jamie's grip gets tighter. Jamie's legs spreading wider. Jamie is trying to breathe through a gasp, too loud and too dangerous to be let out.

You smile against her lips. "Shh..."

There is electricity building between your flushed bodies, thunder rolling in your ears. Jamie tips her head back, her eyes rolling, and her hands -

Jamie's hands are soft and strong around your body, fingers digging into your skin as her lips part around muffled sounds of desperation and need. Jamie's hands are fluttering, their sure air is gone as she rocks, meeting every pump of your fingers inside her with tight, deep lust. Jamie's hands, blissfully flailing, blissfully reaching, blissfully offering security in time when nothing makes much sense beyond the tightening low in your stomach, Jamie's hitching cries, your own burning arm.

Jamie's hands are soft and raw and real, pressed into you, gripping for dear life, losing themselves in your hair, pushing against your ears. Jamie's voice a steady whisper of _give_ and _take_ and _more_ and her hands... her hands -

Jamie is warm and wet, pulling you deeper with every thrust, rocking like crazy, shifting, building a sort of release that feels both solid and comfortable, yet skidding. Jamie is solid and certain, the throb of her going all the way through your neck and your chest and your thighs. Jamie is clenching tight, gladly taking whatever you have to offer, moving relentlessly deep, relentlessly hard, relentlessly rough and Jamie's hands... Jamie's hands -

Jamie's hands are pure desire. Pure want. They grip, curl, smooth. They mark, they press, they go wild.

Jamie's hands are somehow out of control and fully conscious, wrapped around you, secure and wonderful and insistent. They are desperate and solid and sharp.

Jamie's hands are an absolute pleasure, digging out reckless sweeps of storm beneath your skin. They are complete and utter desire, pressing hard, reminding both of you that this is _here_ and this is _now_ and this is a living aftermath of a storm neither one of you know how to navigate just yet.

Jamie pulls you closer, pushes against you with sounds that make your head spin, muffled sort of gasps designed to not be heard.

"There. Right there. Right there. Don't stop".

Jamie is panting and you taste salt on her skin, aware of her grip around your shoulders, aware of her swollen skin against your fingertips, aware of Jamie's tiny jerks as she pushes against you, rising high, eager and chasing and clenching.

You move your own hand, something that feels so weak in comparison, and Jamie rocks against you with increasingly frantic force, her back arching, careful enough not to tip you accidentally off the bed.

You bow your head against Jamie's breastbone, vanishing into the steady rhythm, vanishing into Jamie's hands, Jamie's movements, Jamie's strangled gasps against your hair.

"Dani," Jamie is groaning, gasping, hissing with restrained pitch, and her hands, clean and unapologetic, clutch harder, the weight of each thrust deep inside her make her hands lose control.

"Dani..."

There is a sharp, pleasing pain as Jamie digs her short nails into your skin, heedless of her own strength. There is a thrilling, high joy rolling inside your chest, beating in a mad rhythm in time with your racing heart, as Jamie gives herself over to the relentless momentum, to a wordless finish.

And Jamie's hands, Jamie's good, brave, gentle hands, are palming at you with confused desire, with unavoidable storm, strong and tight and safe as she drags you down with her falling body, whimpering and spent, present enough to matter.

//

Jamie sighs. You kiss her.

Two practiced hands, two good hands, still on your body, pressing hot into you. Two wonderful, strong hands, tucking under you, sliding up your arching back, as a head of dark curls rests on your bare chest.

"I'm here," you tell her and bury your fingers against the hot skin of her neck.

"Thank fuck," she says.

* * *

Jamie is thirty years old and there is mud sticking to her palms.

Jamie is thirty years old and there is potting soil under her nails.

Jamie is thirty years old and she hasn't raised her violent hands with the dark intention to strike in so many years, she can almost pretend she doesn't remember what it feels like.

Her bad, idle hands are doing good now. Growing things. Nourishing fragile lives.

Jamie is thirty years old and there is love written in the scars covering her hands. There is new perfume, lingering on her wrists, smelling of someone who isn't her, but feel like an extension of her body.

She's thirty and her fingertips have already memorised Dani Clayton's body, not enough, not nearly enough, but for now it will do.

Jamie is thirty years old and she can hardly remember the taste of blood. Can hardly remember the crunch of bones. Can hardly remember pressing hot, burning lips to anything that isn't Dani's mouth, Dani's shoulders, Dani's skin.

//

Jamie is just shy of Forty and she can hardly remember the taste of blood. Can hardly remember the crunch of bones. Can hardly remember the press of hot, burning lips, crushing against her with spilled desire. Now her desire, her hot kisses, her primal moans are all directed at Dani, a head of gold on her pillow, a love sprung to life, and this is better. This is so much better.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!
> 
> English is not my first language, and also I'm rocking ADHD like a MF so please excuse any and every misspellings, mistakes, and other Grammarly atrocities.
> 
> Come chat with me about Bly or literally anything you want @ [love-jesus-but-i-drink-a-little](url)


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